


The Haunted Citadel

by redcandle17



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Haunting, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 08:35:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5085613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redcandle17/pseuds/redcandle17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Dag becomes convinced that the spirits of the War Boys who died on Fury Road have come home to the Citadel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Haunted Citadel

The Dag couldn’t sleep. She slept better outside among the green, but Cheedo usually complained of being bitten by insects. The Dag never felt any bites herself, but she’d resigned herself to sleeping in the vault for Cheedo’s sake. Cheedo was sound asleep and had been for some time. The Dag watched her for a moment before sliding her arm free carefully. 

She didn’t bother with shoes, enjoying the feel of the cold, smooth rock beneath her feet. She left the vault and simply wandered, savoring the freedom to roam, no longer confined. It was quiet, so quiet that she fancied herself the only person awake and about. She wandered down to the parts of the Citadel she didn’t visit often, the caverns filled with vehicles and weapons where the surviving War Boys worked. It was there that she felt it.

It was the feeling you felt when someone entered a room while your back was turned. No matter how soft their footsteps, you always knew when you were no longer alone. The Dag was no longer alone. She could feel the presence of someone else. She didn’t see anyone, but then it was dark, with only distantly placed lamps for light. “Hello?” she called.

There was no reply.

But the feeling of another presence grew stronger, like the unseen individual had moved closer, or perhaps had been joined by others. There hadn’t been any trouble with the surviving Boys so far, but the Dag was all too well aware of how dangerous men could be. She turned and made her way back to the safer, more welcoming area of the Citadel.

She thought nothing of the incident until a few days later when she woke early and decided to head up to the green right away. There was a little boy crying outside the vault. The Dag didn’t have much interaction with the small boys Joe had called his ‘War Pups’. Capable had taken responsibility for them and spent most of her time caring for them. The Dag assumed this one was waiting for Capable to wake up.

“Did you have a bad dream?” she asked.

The child shook his head. “No, Miss.”

She wasn’t happy about bearing Joe’s spawn, but it was going to be born in about two hundred days, so she figured she should start practicing how to be motherly. She crouched and used the ends of her shawl to wipe the child’s tears. “Then why are you crying?”

“Slit called me mediocre. I was throwing practice sticks and he said I was mediocre.”

Mediocre, the Dag knew, was the worst insult the boys could call each other. “I’m sure you’re not mediocre at all. This Slit boy is mediocre for calling you mediocre.”

The boy’s eyes were wide and frightened. “Slit didn’t come back, Miss.”

She felt a chill on the back of her neck as she realized the child’s meaning. He meant that Slit was one of the War Boys who’d died pursuing the war rig. The Dag’s people believed in ghosts, believed that the spirits of the dead continued to walk among the living unseen. 

In fact, the Dag’s mother had told her she’d been born with a veil on her face that would allow her to see ghosts. But the Dag had never seen a ghost yet, and so she’d accepted Miss Giddy’s teaching that belief in the supernatural was an attempt to explain things by people without full and proper knowledge. 

“Are you sure it was Slit? Did you see him?”

“I didn’t see him, but it was his voice. There wasn’t no Boys around, just us Pups.”

 _They miss them_ , Capable had told her and Cheedo and Toast one night as they sat around the bathing pool. _The adult Boys were their caretakers and teachers. Their older brothers really._

“Did he call you mediocre before Fury Road?”

The boy nodded. “Almost every day. He said I had weak arms and I’d never be a shine lancer.” 

This Slit War Boy sounded like an asshole, but he’d probably been one of very few adults who ever paid attention to this poor child. Personally, the Dag was of the opinion that they were all better off with so many of Joe’s War Boys dead. Little boys could be taught different and they could adapt quickly - it was what children did - but she wasn’t so sure the grown War Boys would have accepted change so easily if there had been more of them. 

The Dag rubbed the boy’s bald head. “I’m sure he’s too busy in Valhalla to call you mediocre. You keep practicing, little one, and you’ll be better than he ever was.” 

The boy seemed heartened. He threw his arms around her and kissed her cheek. The Dag was too startled to hug him back before he scampered off. A sweet child, but then he didn’t have Joe’s blood in his veins. Even Joe had known his sons were monsters, though he’d refused to accept that it was being his sons that made them monsters.

The Dag felt certain she’d handled this the best way possible. Furiosa didn’t seem like a person who had much patience for stories about ghosts, and Capable would have been upset with her if she’d let the boy keep thinking he’d heard a ghost. But she thought about dead War Boys all day as she tended the new green that was sprouting from the seeds she’d inherited from the Keeper of the Seeds. 

Joe’s Valhalla was bullshit. He’d stolen words and ideas from a people who’d lived and died tens of thousands of days in the past and added his own lies to create something to control his War Boys. Valhalla was meant to make them blind to the stark difference between their deprived lives and Joe’s own life. Valhalla was the place where they’d have all they wanted and it was a place only Joe could lead them to. Valhalla wasn’t real, but it’d been real to the War Boys. 

Each people had their own gods and their own afterlife, and the Dag believed your spirit went wherever you believed it would go. Although Joe was never a real god, maybe Valhalla had been real enough because the War Boys believed in it. But their beliefs would have crumbled when Joe died. Where would their spirits have gone then, with nothing to believe in? 

Toast rolled her eyes when the Dag brought up the topic during their bath that evening. “They’re _dead_ ,” she said. “They aren’t going _anywhere_.”

“I think everyone goes somewhere nice,” Capable said. “Somewhere green, with plenty of trees and clean water.” She had a wistful look on her face, like she was imagining Angharad in this green afterlife, and probably her War Boy too. 

“I like the idea that we’ll all be born again to live another life,” Cheedo said. “Perhaps next time the world won’t be a wasteland anymore.” 

“We’ll have to find a new god and new beliefs for the surviving War Boys and the little boys,” the Dag said. It was a very serious responsibility.

Toast made a disgusted sound, but Capable nodded. “I’ve been reading to the Pups from that book of myths. I don’t want to tell them what to believe like Joe did; I’d rather tell them everything I know and let them choose what to believe.”

“You should do that for the grown up Boys too,” the Dag advised her. She liked the notion of creating a new god and a new afterlife for the Citadel, but Capable had a point about them not telling people what to believe. 

The Dag woke up very early the next morning and descended into the depths of the Citadel. It was quiet. She expected to hear or feel something, but there was nothing. Perhaps the feeling the other night had merely been her imagination. Or perhaps the spirits were elsewhere at the moment. 

“Hello?” she called. “Is anyone here?”

She heard a groan. She was afraid, of course, but very excited too. “Can you tell me your name?”

A War Boy climbed out of the back of a car and rubbed his eyes. “It’s Brake,” he said. “What do you need?”

The Dag was disappointed to realize he was very much alive. “I’ve heard stories from the little ones,” she told him grudgingly. “I’m here to investigate.”

“Oh, you mean about the ghosts,” the Boy said. He yawned and stretched, then leaned against the car he’d been sleeping in. 

“Have you heard them too?” she demanded. “Or seen them?”

“Nah, but they keep messing with me. Moving tools around and such. I’ll reach for a wrench and it’ll be gone. I’ll look for it and find it again sitting right where it should have been the whole time.” 

“You don’t sound scared,” the Dag observed. 

He shrugged. “Can’t be scared. Pity the poor bastards too much. If what happened on Fury Road wasn’t historic enough to open the gates of Valhalla for them, then I don’t know what could be.” 

“Are you afraid your spirit will stay here too when you die?”

He didn’t answer her, but by the expression on his face, the Dag knew it did scare him. 

“Nevermind,” she said. “If you have any other unexplainable encounters, let me know about it, please.”

Two days later one of her helpers formerly of the Wretched asked her permission to return to living on the desert floor down below.

“I’ll come back up for work every morning, Miss,” the woman assured her. She looked frightened, as if she feared the Dag would deny her permission to live where she pleased or tell her not to bother coming back for work and being left to starve.

“If you would prefer that, then certainly you may. I’m curious as to why though.”

The woman looked around nervously. “I don’t feel welcome.”

The Dag assumed some of the surviving War Boys or the platform guards had been hassling the new workers. Even the workers who’d been here under Joe’s rule could sometimes be possessive of their little privileges and resentful of the newcomers. “Is there anyone in particular who’s made you feel unwelcome?”

“I can’t say. It’s not so bad during the day. But once it gets dark, I can feel them watching.”

“The dead can’t hurt the living,” another woman snapped impatiently. “Don’t be a fool, Gladys. Run back down there from ghosts and it’ll be raiders who get you. Live, living raiders, not ghosts.”

“You’ve felt them too?” the Dag asked, surprised.

“We all have, Miss,” a man said. “I hear them sometimes, but I can’t make out what they’re saying. They’re not friendly though. But it’s like Trina says, the dead can’t hurt us.”

When the Dag related this to the others that evening, their responses were predictable. Cheedo and Capable were concerned, but not yet willing to believe that the Citadel was haunted. Toast was dismissive. 

“Don’t encourage them,” she said. “You’ll whip them up into full blown hysteria. Pretty soon you’ll have people talking about ghosts every time the wind howls.”

Toast did have a point. Fear was contagious. The Dag couldn’t be sure how many people had actually had experiences with the ghosts and how many were just victims of their own imaginations.

But more and more people were moving back down to live beneath the Citadel, coming back up only for work. Even people who had considered themselves fortunate to live and work in the Citadel before Fury Road had started moving out. The Dag knew things were dire when the Vuvalini informed them that they too were relocating to the desert floor.

“This is crazy,” Toast insisted, looking at Furiosa. “Tell them.”

Furiosa seemed troubled, but she merely shrugged. “We’ve set up patrols and we have clear lines of sight on anyone approaching. Everyone should be safe down there.”

Maddy put her arm around Toast and gave her a half-hug. “My dear, I was as big a skeptic as you. I still can’t honestly say I believe in ghosts. But I haven’t had a restful night’s sleep in this place.”

The other Vuvalini nodded grimly. “I will say I believe in ghosts after last night. Something pushed me out of bed.”

“Perhaps you just rolled too close to the edge and fell,” Cheedo suggested.

The Dag was surprised that Cheedo was siding with Toast. But perhaps Cheedo didn’t want to believe. This was supposed to be a new beginning, a chance to reshape the broken world they’d inherited into something better. The idea that Joe’s War Boys could ruin their efforts even in death was a difficult thing to accept.

“I believe,” Capable spoke up at last. “I’ve felt myself being watched for a while now. But it’s not hostile. At least it doesn’t feel hostile to me.”

“Let’s say there were dead War Boys hanging around unseen - what do we do about it?” Toast demanded. 

Everyone looked to the Dag, as though she was the expert on hauntings. She debated with herself whether to feign ignorance or to tell them what she’d been told as a child. The dead were dead; they couldn’t change or grow. That was the difference between life and death. Ghosts were stuck in the state they were in at the moment of their deaths. There was nothing to do for them or for yourself. You could only pretend they weren’t there and ignore them.

But the others wouldn’t like to hear that, and the Dag reasoned that if nothing could be done about the ghosts, then trying to do something wouldn’t matter either way. “We could try to communicate with them.”

She noted how relieved they looked and wasn’t surprised when they seemed to assume she’d be the one to deal with the ghosts. Later, when she was lying awake and Cheedo was asleep, the Dag pondered Capable’s admission. 

So Capable had felt them watching her but didn’t feel threatened. The Dag had only felt them the once, and Cheedo had sworn to her that she’d never felt or seen anything odd herself. The Dag had some ideas about why the ghosts weren’t as hostile to them as they were to everyone else, but she couldn’t be sure without more information from Toast. 

She tried to speak with Toast the following day. Toast, however, refused to acknowledge that she’d personally experienced anything at all except “watching everybody work themselves into a hysterical panic.”

There was so much work to be done, even if the Dag did more supervising than actual labor these days, and the baby left her feeling tired and sick often. She wasn’t able to properly address the ghost problem for quite some time, though it had gotten worse.

By day the Citadel was a hive of activity, but at night it was eerily silent and empty of everyone but the remaining War Boys and Repair Boys, the children who were formerly War Pups, the women who were formerly Wives, and Furiosa. Even the Milk Mothers had chosen to start new lives down below. 

Toast claimed to like the peace and quiet, though lately the Dag had observed her glancing over her shoulder frequently so maybe she’d soon admit this place was haunted.

The Dag had noticed, too, that Cheedo rarely left the vault after nightfall. Capable, on the other hand, seemed utterly at ease with the ghosts. The Dag wondered if she believed her Nux was among the ghosts and if that comforted her. It was not a subject she dared broach. 

The Dag sought out Furiosa one evening and found her by the platform, looking down.

“Look at that,” Furiosa said. “People have started building houses. Eventually this will become a real settlement, like Gas Town.”

It was true. Someone knew of a place not too far away with suitable earth, and someone else knew how, and people had offered additional labor in exchange for more water, and now there was a business in making and trading mud bricks. The houses were crude huts, but it was so much more than had been here before.

“This wouldn’t have happened if people were still living up here.”

“Do you believe we’re being haunted, or do you agree with Toast?”

Furiosa gestured to the village taking shape below them. “I believe this is a good thing.”

“So you haven’t felt them watching you?” the Dag persisted. Furiosa had evaded the topic every time she’d asked her before. She hoped that Furiosa would answer her truthfully now that it was just the two of them.

“I see their faces every time I close my eyes,” Furiosa said simply. “They ask me why and I can’t tell them. I traded my crew’s lives for your freedom, did you ever realize that?”

“But the War Boys all wanted to die, didn’t they?” the Dag said uncertainly.

“They didn’t agree to die for the cause I spent their lives on. They wouldn’t have agreed. That’s why I couldn’t tell them. They wouldn’t have understood.”

Furiosa had never spoken like this. She’d never spoken of the War Boys under her command before Fury Road. The Dag didn’t know whether she’d poked a yet-unhealed wound, or offered a sympathetic ear for something Furiosa needed to say. She hoped it was the latter.

“I’m sorry,” she said, because that was all that could be said. “I’m sorry for them, and for you, and for us all.”

Furiosa squeezed her shoulder with her flesh-and-blood hand and looked off into the distance. The Dag took the hint and left her to her solitude.

She’d just reached the vault when a War Boy approached her. He seemed wary and kept glancing at the door like he expected it to open and release a pack of monsters to devour him. It was just a normal door – the heavy steel door with the complicated lock had been removed and given to the Repair Boys for metal work. But these quarters would always be the vault in the Dag’s mind and, apparently, in the minds of the War Boys too.

“You said to find you if I had anything to report.”

She nodded, and tried to remember his name.

“We don’t use the fighting pits much anymore. There aren’t many of us left… Anyway, we mostly use it to train the Pups and to keep ourselves in shape. But you stand outside and you’ll swear you can hear dozens and dozens of Boys shouting and laughing and stuff.”

Before the Dag could formulate a response, the Boy confided, “Maybe it’s not so bad being shut out of Valhalla? At least they’re together and they don’t sound any worse off than when they were alive…”

There was a line of lumps along his left side and he was very thin. The Dag knew it meant he hadn’t much time left in his half life. He looked no older than her and was actually probably a little younger. She felt too sorry for him to be afraid. She patted his shoulder, feeling awkward. 

“Thank you, Brake. You know, Valhalla isn’t the only place for warriors to go. There’s a place called the Elysian Fields where warriors who were _heroes_ go. The ground there is covered in green things and in deep pits of water. Olden people wrote about it in word burgers.”

“Did they really?!”

She nodded solemnly. “You can borrow one if you want.”

“No, the letters are too tiny in those things. I always had to ask someone else to read the auto manuals to me. But you promise it’s true?”

“I promise,” she swore. The Dag didn’t consider it a lie. A people had really believed in such an afterlife a long, long time ago. Maybe it was still there for those who believed. 

The Dag meant to investigate the following night, but then several of the little boys took ill with spots and Capable needed everyone’s help to care for them. Several days passed before the Dag was able to venture down to the deepest part of the Citadel where the cave that Boys called “the fighting pits” was located. 

She understood immediately why Brake had told her it didn’t matter if she came at night or during the day. It was always night this far down. Always dark. She closed her eyes and listened intently.

Nothing.

Disappointed, she stepped inside the cave itself. And she saw them. 

There were at least three dozen War Boys. It wasn’t just Citadel War Boys either. She saw yellow painted Bullet Boys and masked polecats among them. That made sense. All the boys had been raised and trained at the Citadel, to ensure their complete devotion to Joe, before some had been sent to the Bullet Farm and others to Gas Town. They’d come home. 

They fell silent when they noticed her, and the ones who’d been sparring separated and turned to look at her. They encircled her and hands reached out to her. The Dag reminded herself that the dead couldn’t hurt her. But she flinched as a hand made contact with her shoulder. There was no sensation of being touched, however, just a sudden chill. 

“So shiny.”

“Not a hand laid on them!”

They backed off then. 

“What do you want?” the Dag asked. 

“Valhalla!”

“We want to ride eternal, shiny and chrome.”

“He promised!”

“But I don’t see the gates.”

“They should be open for us.”

“We should be mcfeasting with the Boys who died before us.”

The Dag felt like weeping for them. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Do you see any other paths away from here? Or anything else at all? Do you see a light?”

“No,” they answered as one, eerily similar to the way they’d chanted “Immortan” when they were alive.

“There’s just the Citadel.”

“But there was Wretched filth everywhere.”

“And strangers.”

“Ferals.”

“Yes,” the Dag tried to explain. “It belongs to the living, and you are no longer among the living.”

The air became much colder. 

“Why should we let them have it?”

“The Citadel is ours.”

“We have to stand watch until the gates of Valhalla open.”

That would never happen, but the Dag was afraid of what might happen if she stated it aloud. Instead she asked, “What about me and the other wives and my baby?”

“I’d never lay a hand on one of the Immortan’s prize breeders.”

“No War Boy would ever damage the Immortan’s son.” 

“You belong here.”

The Dag fled. Fortunately they didn’t try to stop her and none of them followed her. Her first instinct was to tell the others what had happened, but by the time she reached the vault, she’d reconsidered. They either wouldn’t believe her, or they’d be frightened. 

It went against everything she believed in to make decisions for everyone without their knowledge or consent. But it was as she’d been told as a little girl: there was nothing to do for the dead but pretend they weren’t there.

When her sisters gathered to share the evening meal, the Dag announced, “I don’t think there are any ghosts after all.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you,” Toast said.

“But what about your feeling their presence?” Cheedo asked.

“I let my imagination get carried away. I suppose I was looking for a distraction.” She gestured to her big belly. “The only presence I feel is this baby’s.” 

“I guess I liked the thought that Nux could still be with me,” Capable confessed. 

“Nux is in that green place you spoke of,” the Dag told her kindly. She hadn’t seen him among the ghosts in the fighting pits. 

She turned to Furiosa. “You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if you and the Vuvalini didn’t conspire to spread rumors of a haunting to get people to leave voluntarily.” 

Furiosa smiled briefly. “A clever idea.”

The Dag felt she’d made the right decision. Although those who had fled chose not to return, the mood within the Citadel lightened considerably once she made an official proclamation that the Citadel was, in fact, not haunted. 

It took some effort to learn to let her eyes slide past the dead War Boys, to not acknowledge them or even let her gaze linger on them. It was difficult when there were almost always a handful of them crowded around Capable and her pack of former War Pups, and when one or two of them would sometimes follow a wife around all day. 

The ghosts never came into the vault though. The Dag didn’t know whether they couldn’t, or whether they simply believed it to be as off-limits to them in death as it had been in life. 

“I still think I hear them sometimes,” Brake said. He was painfully thin. 

“You miss your friends,” the Dag said gently, ignoring the ghost making funny faces at Brake. She gave a precious strawberry to the dying War Boy. 

He admired the beauty of the fruit before he took a small bite of it. “It’s so good. Never tasted anything like this before.”

“There’s plenty of these growing in the Elysian Fields. Lots of other delicious fruits too. You can pick as much as you want there and more grow right away.” 

She had no way of knowing if Brake did indeed go to the Elysian Fields when he died, but the Dag never saw him again, much to her relief. The surviving War Boys were not doomed to join the ones who’d died on Fury Road in haunting the Citadel. They would be free when they died. 

“Shh,” the Dag whispered to Forest, noticing how his eyes tracked the ghosts gathered around to admire him. He’d been born with a veil over his face just like she had. “We’ve got to keep the secret.”


End file.
